The last time J.C. Penney Co.'s stock price traded this low, the New York Mets were an expansion team.

Shares of the struggling department-store chain dropped 14% on Tuesday and fell below $5, a level it hasn’t closed below on a split-adjusted basis since October 1962.

UPDATE: After trading as low as $4.90, shares closed down 11% at $5.08, the lowest close since 1980. The stock is off 74% this year.

The latest decline comes after J.C. Penney reported a slim holiday sales gain, making only the barest progress in climbing out of its deep hole. J.C. Penney said comparable-store sales rose about 2% in the fourth quarter, the first time since the second quarter of 2011 that the company reported growth in the closely watched figure.

The quarterly sales gain “is a step in the right direction (but) the slope of the improvement continues to disappoint,’ said analysts at Sterne Agee, adding that Penney’s “sales trend need to improve materially better…and quickly.”

J.C. Penney shares have been mired in a steep downtrend for years. Shares traded above $40 two years ago and as high as $87 in 2007. The company, which was an original member of the S&P 500 going back to its start in 1957, was booted out of the index last year. It currently sports a market capitalization of about $1.5 billion, according to FactSet.

“J.C. Penney needs the improvement to be much better than currently tracking and it is becoming increasingly critical that the company starts to see meaningful improvement if it is to survive as currently constituted,” Sterne Agee says.

As an aside, the Mets finished that 1962 season with a woeful 120 losses. The team rebounded to win its first World Series seven years later.